When Sasuke Comes Home
by Don't Trust the Snake
Summary: AU. After three years, Sasuke returns home to his friends, not sure what to expect. Both Naruto and Hinata have their own moments of freaking out, and lemonade and a pillow make appearances.


_Author's Notes: Eh, so I'm supposed to be working on another fic right now, but I had a really strange dream last night, and I couldn't resist writing a oneshot based off of it. So, obviously, I did write it. And while I have mentioned the pairing in other fics of mine, this is my first official Sasuke/Hinata fanfiction, so I'm kind of excited. And I'm thinking all the characters would be in their early twenties._

__

Anyhow, do enjoy!

* * *

Naruto opened the door expecting, for some odd reason, the pizza man, though he was positive that he hadn't called for a delivery. When he saw not the pizza man, but Sasuke Uchiha, he very nearly fainted.

When Naruto had opened the door, his friend-turned-girlfriend Sakura had expected Ino or Temari, seeing as both their boyfriends, Choji and Shikamaru respectively, were sitting in Naruto's apartment. When the opened door revealed neither of the two girls, but Sasuke Uchiha, she very nearly fainted as well.

Shikamaru and Choji were not entirely sure what they had expected, but they hadn't been expecting the Uchiha.

And Gaara, sitting on Naruto's couch and glaring balefully at the plastic cup of lemonade in his hand, spared the pale-skinned and dark-haired man only a glance before returning to his drink. Who knows what Gaara thought.

The man who stood in the open doorway with his hands in the pockets of his dress pants and a somewhat blank expression on his face, had expected Naruto to be alone. A pity that their friends—_Naruto's _friends—all lived within walking distance of the apartment, otherwise there would have been some sign that the idiot was not alone. Not even Shikamaru, who was usually too lazy to walk, appeared to have brought a vehicle of some type.

For a few awkward, silent minutes, the six persons either stared at each other, or, in Gaara's case, at the cup of lemonade in their hands.

Eventually Gaara let out a deep sigh, rose from the couch, and walked to Naruto's side. The blond, who still had one hand on the door, was staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the man standing in front of him, so Gaara ducked under his outstretched arm, held out the glass of lemonade, and said graciously, "You can have my lemonade. I didn't contaminate it."

Sasuke Uchiha looked down at the proffered glass of lemonade and said the first words any of the people in the apartment had heard him speak in three years. "I don't like sweet things."

"I know," Gaara relied. "But, if nothing else, I'm sure you could do with the support of having something to hold while you try to explain yourself."

Sasuke's look turned thoughtful, and he took the lemonade from Gaara with a small nod of thanks.

Gaara then said, "Come find me when it's over. I want to hear this story too." That said, he slipped past Sasuke and walked down the street, disappearing from sight in a matter of seconds.

Awkward silence reigned once again, until Sasuke, who was feeling just a bit uncomfortable, and wondering if maybe he should just leave, said, "Um…"

That one-syllable filler word broke the metaphorical ice, and Naruto, whose stint of inactivity was telling on him (he never had been able to stay still), flung himself at Sasuke and screeched, "You idiot! You were gone for three years and didn't even say goodbye!"

Sasuke instinctively flinched, waiting for the fist to his face, and was surprised when instead, he got arms around his midsection and a face in his shoulder.

Opening his eyes to find Naruto attempting to hug the life out of him, all Sasuke could muster up to say was, "Uh…"

Then Sakura, who had been sitting on the floor, too stunned to act upon what she saw before her, gained courage from Naruto's actions and decided to fling herself at Sasuke too.

Sasuke, now accosted from both sides, with two pairs of arms squeezing him far harder than either of his former friends should have had the strength for and a face buried in each shoulder, was at a complete loss for what to do. This really wasn't what he had been expecting as far as reactions. He had fully expected to be attacked, both verbally and physically, and while he did consider what was happening to him now to be an attack, it wasn't the one he thought it would be.

At least he'd managed to keep the lemonade from spilling.

"Naruto, if you keep on hugging him like that, he might leave again, if for nothing else than fear of broken ribs," Shikamaru's dry voice said, causing Naruto to leap back from Sasuke like he'd been burned, while Sakura merely pulled away and began wiping her face. Well, that was expected. Sasuke's expectations had included Sakura crying, since, well, it's just what he saw happening. He had not, however, included-

"Dobe, are you crying?" Sasuke said incredulously, the nickname slipping out before he could stop himself.

"No!" Naruto practically yelled, scrubbing his face furiously. "Stupid teme," he muttered under his breath.

Again unable to stop himself, Sasuke found himself asking, "Don't you- don't you hate me?"

"Of course I hate you!" Naruto replied. "I've always hated you! But that doesn't mean you can't be my best friend. And how would you feel if you were seeing your best friend in the whole wide world standing in front of you after not seeing him for three whole years?"

"About how I feel now," Sasuke's mouth said, before he had time to dilute the absolute truth of those words. Blast it. He sees all the people he used to know and just goes to pieces, doesn't he?

At his words, Naruto promptly burst out sobbing, and latched onto Sasuke once more, soaking the collar of the taller man's shirt in seconds.

"Naruto, you're such a girl!" Sasuke exclaimed, which earned him a hit to the back of the head and a yell that was muffled by his shoulder.

"Am not!"

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not!"

"Then why are you sobbing into my shoulder like a little girl who just had her favorite puppy returned to her?"

At that, Naruto looked up, grinning through the tears that streaked his face and saying, "Does that mean you're comparing yourself to a dog?"

Sasuke returned the cuff to the back of the head with his free hand. The other was still protecting the plastic cup of lemonade

"Well, then." Both Naruto and Sasuke turned towards Shikamaru, who had spoken once more, as he said, "Welcome back, Uchiha."

Choji nodded in agreement to this, and Sakura clasped her hands, beaming through the tears that were still leaking out of her eyes.

Sasuke was astonished.

"That's it? Just- just a welcome back as if nothing happened?"

Naruto took a couple of steps back, and Sakura grabbed his hand at he wiped his face with the sleeve of his (orange) shirt. "Of course. What did you expect? You're one of our most important people."

Sasuke couldn't get his mind around the concept of someone—anyone—welcoming him back after he had up and left, giving no word of his departure, and keeping no contact whatsoever for three years. "You- I- -You aren't even going to swear at me?"

"Neither of us have enough bad words to say to you to express ourselves fully," Sakura said, "so we'll settle for just welcoming you back."

"But that doesn't mean that you aren't going to be interrogated within an inch of your life," Shikamaru added.

Naruto nodded enthusiastically, then it suddenly seemed to hit him that _Sasuke was back_.

For a moment, he reverted to staring at his best friend with an open mouth, then he shrieked and started jumping up and down and running around his apartment, screaming at the top of his voice, "Sasuke's back! Sasuke's back!"

And Sasuke, still too shocked to believe that they would actually take him back, just like that, allowed himself to be dragged inside the house, and forced a chair, with Choji, Shikamaru, Naruto and Sakura all facing him from the couch. As questions began flying at him, all Sasuke could really do was stare at the lemonade he still held and wonder why he hadn't come back sooner.

* * *

Four hours later, when the questions had petered out, and Shikamaru and Choji had left with the permission to tell everyone else that Sasuke had returned, Sasuke was still staring at the untouched lemonade in the cup.

He looked up briefly, and saw that Sakura had pulled her legs up underneath her, and had her head resting on Naruto's shoulder. A ghost of a smile flitted across the Uchiha's face and he said, "I always did tell you that it was only a matter of time before you two got together."

Naruto smiled back and him and reached up to rub the back of his neck. "Yeah."

"When did you start dating, exactly?" Sasuke asked. "I hope it wasn't right after I left, because that seems a little clichéd."

"No, it wasn't right after you left," Sakura replied. "In fact-" she and Naruto exchanged a look "-we didn't get along very well at all right after you left."

Sasuke raised a single dark eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah…" Naruto rubbed the back of his neck again, the arm that was around Sakura's shoulders tightening slightly. "After you left, we, uh, kind of hated each other for just a little while."

Both of Sasuke's eyebrows shot up on his forehead. "What?"

"Um," Sakura said, sharing another one of those looks with Naruto. "Well, we both kind of blamed each other for the fact that you left. He thought it was my fault, and I thought it was his fault, and both of us were scared to death that it might be our fault."

"Yeah, so anyhow," Naruto said hastily, "After eight months of that, we decided that we didn't like hating each other, and we decided to try liking each other instead." He looked at Sakura and smiled, saying, "So far it's worked out pretty well."

Sasuke felt a sharp pang in the area of his heart, and he cursed within the privacy of his own head, looking down.

When he raised his eyes again, both Naruto and Sakura were looking at him apprehensively, and Sasuke knew the question before Naruto cautiously asked it, because it was the only question that had so far been avoided. "Whose fault _was_ it that you left, Sasuke?"

Sasuke looked down yet again, focusing on the liquid within the plastic cup, his hands squeezing the cup so that its sides bowed in, making the level of the lemonade rise.

"It wasn't anyone's fault," he said quietly.

"Then why did you go?" Now Sakura's voice was hurt.

Sasuke didn't say anything for a long time, but the silence was more comfortable than when he had first knocked on the door.

Eventually he shifted in his seat and said, "I just couldn't take it anymore."

"Oh," Naruto said quietly. "It was the anniversary when you left, wasn't it?"

"Yeah. And things started reminding me of what happened." Sasuke relaxed his hand, not wanting to break the cup he held and drench himself in the sweet and sticky liquid. "Things like the color red, and anyone with black hair and pale skin. And I couldn't sleep at night, and I couldn't stay at my house, because I could almost swear that I could still see the bloodstain where I found Mom."

Sakura winced at how bluntly Sasuke was speaking, but he continued. "Whenever I did anything wrong, I started to hear my dad's voice in my head, telling me to be more like…Itachi."

Sasuke couldn't stop the shudder that ran through his body as he said the name of his brother, and both Sakura and Naruto's eyes turned sad. Life had been hard for Sasuke ever since his brother had descended into insanity and killed his family, leaving only Sasuke alive.

"And then," Sasuke continued, "They caught Itachi, and told me that it was unlikely he would ever be sane again. And when I went to see him…" Another shudder passed through him, and Sakura got up from her place on the couch to kneel by him, one hand resting on his leg. "I shouldn't have gone to see him," Sasuke said miserably.

"But you had to," Naruto said.

Sasuke nodded once.

"Anything else?" Sakura asked gently.

Sasuke hesitated very briefly, then said, "I got in a really bad fight with…You know."

Yes, indeed, they did know, and Sakura and Naruto shared yet another of those looks that made Sasuke ever so slightly jealous and very, very sad.

"What- what happened, exactly?" Sakura asked. "We know that you had a fight, because she was really, really upset, but she never told us what you were fighting about."

Sasuke dropped his head lower. "She said I kept on looking through her. That I was too distant. That I couldn't disassociate her from my family. All true." His head dropped even lower. "I told her that she was a selfish brat who was so used to getting what she wanted that she couldn't look at other people and be aware of their problems."

Sakura drew back, her eyes wide, and Naruto exclaimed, "You said that to _her_?"

"I was having a really bad day," Sasuke said softly, though he knew perfectly well that there was no excuse for his actions. "That was the last time I saw her."

"Have you seen her yet?" Naruto asked.

Sasuke shook his head. "I don't even know where she lives anymore, only that she doesn't live at her old house." He looked up. "Do you know where she lives? Because I'm going to have to talk to her sooner or later."

"I'm thinking sooner might be the better option," Naruto said after a moment of silence, "Because she lives right on the other side of that wall." That said, he raised his hand and pointed at the wall behind Sasuke, who whipped around and then back to face Naruto, struggling to keep the panic he felt off of his face.

"She lives right next door to you?"

"Yeah. She moved there three months after you left."

It made a lot of sense, actually. Naruto had always been one of her closest friends, and had nearly always been able to comfort her in some manner or another. It stood to reason that she would want to be closer to him, especially after what Sasuke had done to her.

"Is she-?" Sasuke half asked, and Naruto looked at the clock on his wall and said, "No, she won't be home for another two hours."

"Where is she?" Sasuke asked.

"Work. She's a secretary."

Sasuke looked down, not wanting to ask his next question because he was afraid of the answer he would get.

"How did… How did she take it all?"

The look that Naruto turned on him was the first one to be at all disapproving. "Well, how do you feel?"

Sasuke had to focus so that he wouldn't crunch the cup he held.

"Take that and multiply it by four and maybe you have something close to what she went through, and, as far as I know, what she is still going through."

"It's been three years," Sasuke muttered. "Shouldn't she have gotten over me?"

"Have you gotten over her?" Sakura countered.

Sasuke didn't say anything.

"That's what I thought," Sakura said.

"When are you going to go see her?" Naruto asked.

Sasuke shrugged, obviously tense. "I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't, not for a while. I can't imagine that she would want to see me after all that."

"You should talk to her," Sakura said. "When she gets back."

Again, Sasuke was careful not to let the panic he felt show on his face. "Today?"

"Yes, today!" Naruto said. "When else would you do it?"

"Later."

"Today," Naruto said firmly. "When she gets back."

And after another five minutes of arguing, Sasuke agreed.

* * *

Hinata Hyuuga didn't really like work. Not that it was a bad job or anything, it was just that she did not like work, simply by virtue of it being work. Though if you asked some of her friends, they would say there were a lot of things she didn't like lately. Or for the past three years, for that matter.

With a sigh, Hinata rubbed her forehead, as if she could massage away the memories that hurt so much. Nothing she had tried had been able to get rid of those, though. Even when she had gone and wasted herself at a bar, and Naruto had had to come and retrieve her, and Sakura had stayed up with her all night, holding her hair for her while she vomited.

Hinata winced. Ooo. Maybe that wasn't the best memory to think of either. Especially the bit where Naruto had started crying, because he said he hated seeing her like this, and when Naruto had said that if _he _were here, it would have hurt _him_ so very badly. The normally calm Hinata had thrown the hyperactive blond out of her house when he had said that. Sakura had been wise enough not to comment.

Pulling her jacket closer to her in an attempt to ward off the autumn chill, Hinata stopped in front of her apartment door, pulling her key out of her purse and inserting it into the lock. She looked at the window of Naruto's apartment, right next to hers, and saw three vague shapes through the curtains. Sakura must be over, as well as one of Naruto's many other friends.

She couldn't stop the sad frown that crawled over her features. It wasn't as if she wasn't happy for Naruto and Sakura; really, she was. It was just that she couldn't help but be jealous.

Shaking her head, Hinata twisted the knob of her door and pushed it open, stepping into her dark apartment and flipping on the light as she shut the door behind her. She walked through her living room and into the kitchen, which was separated from the living room only by the fact that the carpet changed to tile, and put her keys on the counter where she hopefully wouldn't forget them. She took off her jacket and draped it across the back of a chair before she put on a kettle to begin making tea.

Unbeknownst to her, her neighbor and his two guests were currently arguing fiercely, because once they had heard the sound of her door closing, two had begun prodding the other one, who was nearly reduced to what for him would classify as hysterics, and for everyone else would classify as minor alarm.

So while Hinata made her tea, she remained quite unaware of the drama that was playing out a wall away from her, and, since the apartments had been blessed with rather thick and sound-proof walls, she didn't hear the exclaimed, "Fine! I'll go! Just give me a minute to compose myself," that signified the culmination of the heated debate.

She was also not aware that when she heard a knock at her door, the persons in the apartment next to hers, still three in number, froze and looked at each other with apprehension, wondering who could be knocking, and what type of wrench this would throw in their own plans.

Hinata opened the door to find an incredibly excited Ino, who practically threw herself through the doorway before Hinata even had a chance to say, "I-Ino. Um, please come in."

Ino had bounded into the living room, hair flying behind her, before Hinata had shut the door, and when Hinata turned around, she found herself embarrassed that she hadn't picked up the blanket and pillow that were on the couch, where she had been sleeping last night, because she couldn't sleep in her bed. Ino, however, didn't seem to notice the slovenly addition to the living room as she spun around, grabbed Hinata hands and said the only two words that could have shocked her out of her mind.

"Sasuke's back."

For a few seconds, all that Hinata could do was stare at the excited blue eyes of her friend and blink.

Then she pulled away, saying, "No, he's not."

She walked into the kitchen to retrieve her tea, and sat down at the small table, her gaze once again drawn to the pillow on the couch. _He_ had always liked that pillow, for some reason. It was just plain white, but _he _had once told her that it always smelled like her.

She shook her head. What was with all the reminiscing today?

Ino, who had taken the seat across from her, was looking at her worriedly, and Hinata said, "I-I'm f-fine."

She frowned. She had gotten over her stuttering problem, hadn't she?

She shook her head once again, wrapping her hands around her mug of tea, saying, "There's n-no way he could be b-back. It's not p-p-possible."

She flushed, realizing how much she had stuttered. Ino shouldn't say things like that!

Ino leaned across the table and said earnestly, "No, really! I promise. Choji told me that he and Shikamaru had _seen _him. Talked to him, even!"

Hinata kept her face as blank as she possibly could, wishing—not for the first time—that she could be more like _him_.

"B-but-" Hinata gritted her teeth, looking down and taking a deep breath so that she could speak without stuttering. "But there doesn't seem to be anything holding him here. In fact, there are a lot of reasons why he would w-want to l-leave."

Hinata squeezed her eyes shut. She had almost made it, but then she had started thinking about how maybe it was her fault after all, because of what she had said, when she _knew _that it was the anniversary, and he was always distant then.

Ino, looking sympathetic, said, "Hinata, I'm sure it was nothing you did, honey. After all, who could be offended by someone as sweet as-"

She was rather abruptly cut off by the door opening to admit a tall, pale man dressed in a black suit and a white shirt, with raven hair that framed his face in the front and spiked in the back. He calmly shut the door behind him, as if walking unannounced into someone's home was completely normal. Which, actually, for them, it had been. Looking at the two stunned women, he raised both eyebrows, his face placid, as he went and sat down on the couch, taking the pillow Hinata had left there and wrapping his arms around it before burying his face in it and inhaling deeply. It was a scene that Hinata had seen so often she almost felt as if she had imagined the whole three years he had been gone. That was what he had always done. He would walk in through her door, find her pillow, then sit down on the couch and wrap his arms around it. And if he thought she was mad at him, he would bury his face in the pillow.

For the space of a few heartbeats, there was silence. Then Hinata, who seldom got angry and who even more seldom showed it, surged to her feet and screamed, "How DARE you! How DARE you just walk in as if nothing happened! How DARE you leave me alone for three entire years and then waltz into my house as if expecting everything to go back to normal!"

Ino, who was more shocked at Hinata's fury than Sasuke's sudden entry, said, "Uh, I think I'll leave you two alone, then."

Hinata, whose attention was focused entirely on the stupid, heartbreaking, beautiful, moronic, cowardly idiot of a man who was sitting on her couch hugging her pillow, didn't notice as Ino stood up and edged towards the door and Sasuke,, who, by force of habit, had his face buried in the pillow because he couldn't bring himself to look at Hinata, and also because he had forgotten how good that pillow smelled, didn't notice because, well, his face was buried in a pillow.

So Ino made good her escape before booking it to the apartment next door and screaming to Naruto and Sakura that SASUKE WAS SITTING ON HINATA'S COUCH! After pulling the screaming blond inside the apartment, Naruto and Sakura told her that they knew that, because they were the ones who had sent him over there. Then they told her to be quiet and wait with them.

Hinata, meanwhile, was still screaming her head off, now standing in the center of the living room. "I can't BELIEVE you, Sasuke! What were you even thinking, walking in here just like you used to? Did you think I would want you here? Huh? After what you said to me and how you just left without saying anything, and how no one heard from you for three whole YEARS? Did you think it would all just go back to normal? Did you think everything would be fine? BECAUSE IT'S NOT! Nothing's fine!"

Hinata didn't even realize that she was sobbing now, and her hands were flailing wildly, as if searching for something to hit. Preferably something male, dark-eyed, pale-skinned, dark-haired, and having the letters S-A-S-U-K-E U-C-H-I-H-A in their name.

Sasuke didn't have to remove his face from the pillow to know that Hinata was crying. And that hurt. So when Hinata paused her tirade in order to take a breath, he cleared his mouth of the pillow, not bothering to open his eyes, and asked quietly, "Do you want me to leave?"

That stalled all plans Hinata had for verbally ripping him to shreds, because as soon as those words left his mouth she yelled, louder than anything else she had yelled, "NO!" The possibility of him leaving _again_ was far too paralyzing a thought to even consider.

The response startled Sasuke enough that his head flew upright, and for a moment, dark eyes met light eyes for the first time in three years, before Sasuke looked away.

Hinata's hands were clenched into fists at her side, and she was breathing heavily. When Sasuke looked away, she had shut her eyes, trying to work out the muddle that was her thoughts.

She hated him for what he had done to her. He had left, and he had hurt her, and he had hurt her _badly._ He had hurt her so much that she had cried herself to sleep five months straight. He had hurt her so much that she had called _Neji_ and bawled her story out through the phone, prompting her usually stoic cousin to say that if the Uchiha so much as _thought _about her again, he was going to be violently murdered, after which Hinata had hastened to assure Neji that she didn't _actually_ wish were Sasuke dead, she was just trying to illustrate her frustration. He had hurt her so much that she couldn't even _describe _how much he had hurt her.

But she loved him too. She loved him just as much as she hated him, and she knew that it he left again, things…wouldn't go well for her.

She took a few deep, steadying breaths before opening her mouth to speak once more.

"Why did you leave?"

"I couldn't deal with it."

Sasuke's reply was half muffled by the pillow, but Hinata heard and understood him, and she swallowed once and asked, "Is it my fault?"

"No!"

The reply was surprisingly forceful, and Hinata found herself opening her eyes to stare at the hunched man on her couch.

"It's just that all those things you said to me… they were true," Sasuke said softly. "And I knew they were true, and it made me mad, so I lashed out. And then, with everything else that had happened, I couldn't bring myself to come back to you and say that I was sorry."

"So you ran," Hinata said.

"So I ran."

"Idiot."

"I know."

"I would have come with you."

Once more, Sasuke's head jerked up. "What?"

This time when their eyes met, neither of them looked away, and Hinata repeated, her voice resolute, "I would have come with you."

"But what about what I said to you?"

"It wouldn't have mattered."

For a moment, they just stared at each other. Then Sasuke shifted his grip on the pillow and said, "You grew your hair out."

A faint blush spread across Hinata's still tear-stained cheeks, but she didn't look away as she said, "Well, you always did say that you liked girls with long hair. After you left I grew it out because I thought that maybe…maybe if I made myself more what you wanted me to be, you would come back."

She was fighting tears again, and Sasuke, voice surprisingly gentle, said, "Hinata, you were perfect. You are perfect. I don't think you could ever _not_ be perfect." Then he hesitated and added, "How was I supposed to know that you grew your hair out, though?"

"I was d-distraught!" Hinata snapped.

Sasuke voice went very, very quiet. "I know. I'm sorry."

"I don't know if I can forgive you," Hinata said, just as quietly.

Sasuke burrowed his chin deeper into the pillow. "I'm not asking you to."

Slighly frustrated, Hinata asked, "Then what are you asking me to do?"

Sasuke closed his eyes and dropped his face to the pillow again, inhaling. "Just don't hate me."

For a moment or two, the tears that resumed sliding down Hinata's face made their progress in silence, then a sob burst out of her, unusually loud in the stillness.

Sasuke's shoulders tensed, because while he knew what he wanted to do, he also knew that it might not be accepted the way it was supposed to be. So he tightened his already iron hold on the pillow in his arms and bit his lip.

Hinata's sobs became more and more frequent, until she was shaking with whatever emotions she was trying to release, and finally Sasuke couldn't take it anymore.

He stood up in a smooth motion, dropping the pillow to the couch and crossing the room in three quick steps so that he could wrap his arms around his former girlfriend and pull her to his chest and bury his face in her hair and tell her, "I'm so, so, so sorry."

Fortunately for him, she didn't try to pound his face in like he was worried she might, and instead she wrapped her arms around his neck and cried into his shoulder, which became soaked for the second time that night. And no offense to Naruto meant, but he preferred this soaking over the first one.

It was a couple of minutes before Hinata could stop her sobs, and another couple of minutes before her hiccups subsided as well. Neither of them moved once she was composed, and both of them kept their eyes shut, breathing deeply and relaxing in each other's embrace.

Eventually, Hinata said, "It hurts too much to hate you," to which Sasuke absently replied, "You smell better than the pillow."

The sound Hinata made was somewhere between a giggle and a snort, and Sasuke's lips reflexively quirked upwards in a smile. She used to make that noise a lot. It meant that she couldn't quite decide whether to hug him tighter or slap him upside the head. This time she settled for hugging him tighter, because both of them knew that once they broke apart, they would have to begin rebuilding their relationship, because there had been too much pain to be able to simply pick up where they had left off.

"What's going to happen after we let go?" Hinata asked quietly.

"We're going to try to get back what I broke."

"Hey." Hinata lightly slapped the back of Sasuke's head. "It wasn't completely your fault."

Sasuke shifted the position of his face in her hair and said, "Yeah, it pretty much was."

"Okay, maybe a little bit."

"It wasn't you who did anything wrong," Sasuke said into her hair. "So most of what will be going on is me trying to win back your trust and redeem myself enough that you might consider forgiving me."

Hinata opened her eyes and stared at the black material of his suit jacket. He wore suits a lot, but that stood to reason, seeing as he had taken over his family business. She dropped her forehead back to his shoulder and said, "You know I'll forgive you eventually."

"But it might take time."

"It might," Hinata conceded.

They lapsed back into silence, content with their positions.

Sasuke was the first to break their comfortable silence, letting out a sigh and saying, "We should probably go over to Naruto's really quick, because he and Sakura and Ino probably think that we're either doing something inappropriate or have killed each other."

Hinata blushed and snuggled deeper into Sasuke's shoulder for a few moments, while he stroked through her hair, murmuring, "I like it long."

After a few more minutes, they finally separated, both with deep sighs.

"Now?" Hinata asked.

"Now we go visit Naruto, Sakura and Ino."

"What then?"

Sasuke considered, tilting his head to the side and making his hair brush across his nose. "Then I walk you back here, even though it doesn't even take a minute to get from Naruto's apartment to yours, then I go home."

"You're living at the Uchiha manor?"

Sasuke winced, just slightly. "Yeah."

"And what will happen tomorrow?"

"I'll call you."

"I'll answer."

"Then I'll ask if you want to go to dinner in a week or so."

"I'll say yes."

"Then maybe we'll casually meet up in the park we used to go to all the time, and I'll tell you what I've been doing for the past three years."

"I'll return the favor."

"And hopefully you'll start to trust me again, and I'll stop being such a jerk."

"We can hope."

"Oh, and somewhere in there I need to find Gaara and tell him everything. And make him lemonade."

At that, Hinata became confused. "Why lemonade?"

"Eh, I'll explain later."

* * *

_Brief Note on the Original Dream: In my dream, Sasuke showed up at Naruto's apartment, Naruto jumped up and down and screamed, "Sasuke's back! Sasuke's back!" while other (indeterminable) persons in the apartment stared at the two of them, Hinata talked to someone who was female in her own apartment, Sasuke walked the (very) short distance to Hinata's apartment and entered it without knocking, Sasuke sat on the couch and took what was in my dream a rolled-up towel and hugged it and buried his face in it and very obviously inhaled, Hinata freaked out, Sasuke got up and hugged her, and Sasuke told her that her hair smelled better than what was in my dream the rolled-up towel. And I changed the towel to a pillow because I couldn't figure out what someone would be doing with a rolled up towel on their couch. And I have no idea where the lemonade came from. Random. And then I tried to figure out why the heck I was dreaming about Naruto characters…_

_**?**_

_And that's about it._

_I would beg you to review, but begging is so uncivilized… So, if you feel like it, I would strongly urge you to review, because I appreciate the opinions of others._

_Much thanks!_

_~Snake _


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